77% of internet users read blogs. Blogs are an efficient way to inform, entertain and engage an audience with ease. Hence, we are going to share with you 5 tips to write an effective academic blog!

Writing and managing a blog may take some effort, but it can prove to be crucial in setting up effective school communication between teachers and parents.

Let us take a look at some tips you can incorporate to write an engaging academic blog to keep parents updated about all the happenings of the academic year.

Adding a blog to your existing website can increase its traffic by a whopping 434%. With educational institutions, however, the goal isn’t simply to draw traffic to their website. It is to keep students and their parents in the loop about the happenings of the school.

Creating an academic blog helps bring transparency to the way a school facilitates the learning of its students. Given below are the five tips you can follow to write a dynamic academic blog to keep students and parents up to date with the academic year:

1. Know your audience base 

Creating authentic content that engages your readers begins by identifying the audience first and foremost. Who will be reading your blog? Who will it be targeted at? Students and their parents. 

The content you create should be meant for them. For example, if you want to create a blog post about the importance of physical activity for students, it should be aimed at encouraging parents to ensure that their children stay active.

2. Ensure it is accessible to the parents

No matter how good your content is, it will only fulfil its purpose when your target audience will be able to access it. Ensure that they receive the blog posts with ease. You may send them notifications, messages, or emails with the link to the blog.

You can also share them on social media to extend your reach. Another way to make sure parents see them is to share them in the places which parents frequent, such as community forums and the academic calendar on your website.

3. Provide a navigation path 

To ensure increased and consistent engagement from the parents, educate them on how they can make the most out of blogs. Simple things such as knowing how to search a blog or leave comments can help them authentically engage with you. 

Give clear navigation paths to parents via messages and emails. You may also do this in a face-to-face setting. Encourage them to ask questions in case they get stuck at any step. It helps them become a part of a wider blogging community. 

4. Publish static information on your blog

Add additional pages to your blog that provide stationary information about your blog and school in general. It can act as an anchor for new readers and even older ones in case they wish to look for something particular. 

Create an index of sorts where you explain the goal of the blog and divide content into groups. Add information about how to navigate the blog and how readers can get more involved by way of commenting and sharing. 

5. Offer regular opportunities for involvement 

Offer opportunities for parents to get more involved with your blog. One of the simplest ways to do this is by ending every blog with a question for them to answer in the comments. They may also share their answers on social media.

Another way to do this is by asking for guest posts by parents that may be published, say, once a month. Keen writers may send in their thoughts, making the blog much more engaging for  its audience. 

Conclusion 

While many schools host blogs on their websites, they often struggle to maintain them or come up with new content. The target audience for your blog is often the parents of the students.

Focus on creating content that keeps them in the loop about the academic year in an entertaining manner. You can also involve them with the blog more by encouraging them to comment and share the blog posts. 

If you’d like to know more, don’t forget to get in touch! At School Jotter we love chatting about all things education and how to make it fun!

Communication is key to the effective running of a school. Good communication fosters good relationships and in educational institutions, with so many stakeholders, relationships are incredibly important. With this in mind, the channels a school chooses to communicate through also become important in themselves, especially as social media now offers a chance to reach people in a way that is direct and immediate.
There are, of course, inherent risks, and there is often an understandable hesitancy from schools to utilise open platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. But if this is the case, the setting up of a school blog can act as a more manageable way to put your institution’s message out there.
A school blog attached to a website can present an insight to the daily goings on behind the gates and in the hands of a curator with an eye for detail, an ear to the ground and a little talent with the written word it can offer an extremely human voice of an institution that is often viewed as being closed-off to those who aren’t teaching or learning within it. One of the complaints that parents and carers often have is that there are only a number of communication points in a year and that sometimes it can be a mystery as to what is going on (given the uncommunicative nature of many adolescents and teenagers!). An effective school blog will not only disseminate important information throughout the year in an easy-to-digest format, it can concentrate on some of the minutiae that is often lost. There may be an exceptional piece of work that deserves a wider audience, a teacher explaining the finer points of how to help the kids with their study skills for an upcoming test, or photos, video and audio from a recent volunteering event. All these and more add colour and vibrancy that often goes unnoticed. Content that includes successes, news, input from teachers, children and management in a style that reflects the ethos of the school goes a long way to offering an insight into the work that goes on and can be presented in the most positive way possible. It can also give parents and carers a chance to respond to those events, bringing the school and the local community together. And unlike other platforms, there is always a chance to moderate.
A school blog acts as a window and allows the outside world in (to an extent of the school’s choosing) and enables schools to share the fantastic things that are happening and deserve to be shared.

The pursuit of ‘authenticity’ in education when it comes to student activities is always a hot topic. The question of whether we can truly prepare students for a life outside school when we teach them within the walls of the classroom is one that comes up again and again.
What steps can teachers take to bring the wider world into their place of learning in an effort to engage children and help them to see the work that they are doing in a wider context?
 
Student Blogging
Student blogging is one of the ways that teachers can bring an authentic audience to their students, increasing engagement, and widening the horizons of any classroom-based activity. It’s often the case that children’s work is only really seen and commented on by their teacher. By using blogging platforms, a child’s efforts can potentially be seen by a global audience who can constructively comment on that work. When a child understands this, they often increase the effort they put in as it’s not just a teacher who will be reading what they wrote. There are sometimes drawbacks as an audience is not guaranteed and the teacher must be confident in things such as privacy settings,
 
Video Visits
Bringing experts into the classroom has always been a sure-fire way to increase engagement and the scope of a particular project. However, there are often organisational hurdles that go along with these types of visits. Video conferencing software can be used to great effect to try to alleviate some of the trickier logistical issues of having visitors in school and can also be used to make links between classes and schools where previously, geographical constraints would have made this an extremely laborious process. Tim Peake discussing his time in space with children in the classroom whilst actually in space has been an excellent recent example of this, and the possibilities are numerous as video conferencing offers the next best thing to a physical presence in the classroom.
 
Project-Based Learning
Project-based learning offers a mirror to how hurdles are overcome in the world of work whilst presenting an alternative to the more linear breakdown of sharply defined subjects. Students try to find the answer to a complex question or a challenge often framed in the real world and have to use a cumulation of their collective knowledge and skills in completing the task. English, maths, science, art and a sense of collaboration all go towards successful achievement in a closer reflection of how things work outside of the classroom.
In utilising these ideas and more, teachers can begin to explore the idea of bringing authentic learning to the classroom, and by doing so, give their students a taste of what things are like in the wider world, preparing them for their journey as learners and their negotiation of it.

This week it is Staff Blog week here at Webanywhere, so each day we have been sharing with you a new blog post from one of our employees. Today, it’s the last of the week and we have Cieran Douglass asking why does learning have to be so serious?

In order to write this blog post, I’ve been wracking my brains for examples of where I did some learning that was particularly notable, so I could provide an interesting hook rather than just a fairly mundane observation. I had a pretty standard education really – local village primary school, grammar school in a nearby town, then university, where I muddled through and managed to get a 2:1 in Politics. None of it stands out as particularly notable really.
Then I started thinking about the other places I’ve learned things, things outside of my education, and my mind wandered back to 2007. This was the year I got my first proper computer I didn’t have to share with my family, and I developed an interest in graphic design, first just through MS Paint, then GIMP, right up to Photoshop. It was the last of those that drew me, late that year, towards the “You Suck at Photoshop” series of video tutorials on YouTube. It’s not really safe for work, but I’d recommend anyone interested in digital imaging check it out, since as well as being informative it’s also hilarious.
Chronicling a man’s descent into madness and rejection while also providing some very handy Photoshop tips, the series has taught me things I’m still using to this day. Ever since, when I want to learn something, I’ve headed for online videos, and the engaging ones are the ones that are both informative and entertaining. If I’m learning for pleasure, I want the pleasure part to be an important factor! It keeps me focused and also helps me to remember things – a joke’s as good a mnemonic as anything else!
I don’t want you to get the wrong idea from this – I’m not saying that there’s no place for important documentary film-making or anything – I enjoy Attenborough as much as the next guy, and there’s some things it can be difficult to make light of – but when it comes to memorisation of facts, retaining engagement and producing effective results, I find I learn much better when I’m laughing.
It’s not just video content though – when browsing through Waterstones with a friend the other day we came across the textbooks section, and I was reminded of my science lessons at school. By far the most interesting and memorable textbooks I had were CGP’s – a company managing to fuse important topic with an air of whimsy I really appreciated. They certainly made revision that bit less stressful, for me at least!
Of course, everyone learns differently – I enjoy humour, you might not, I like computers, you might not etc, and just because I found a way to learn that helped me doesn’t mean it’ll work for you too – this is my experience, and I’m not here to be prescriptive!
Cieran Douglass

This week it is Staff Blog week here at Webanywhere, so each day we will be sharing with you a new blog post from one of our employees. Today it’s Helen Bound discussing the best possible VLE for teachers.

One of the often repeated gripes from teachers about their expected e-learning involvement is lack of time to produce content. ‘We’re too busy marking, and writing reports, and planning, and teaching and…” and so it goes on. These are all valid points but until senior leaders recognise the importance of a learning platform for their teachers and students alike there will never be sufficient time put aside to allow staff to author their content and start providing 21st century learning experiences.
Having worked in this industry for 10 years and recognising the value of e-learning with this generation I feel that some school leaders are very short-sighted in their ability to provide flexible working arrangements for their staff and understand that lesson planning does not revolve around a large A3 piece of paper and coloured pens anymore or a word document. E-planning and resource creation can all be done online. Straight to the learning platform, no middle-man, thus saving time…and paper.
Sharing this ideology with teachers can do two things, inspire them to produce the most wonderful teaching resources and share with colleagues and make it their preferred mode of teaching or turn teachers away because they don’t have the IT confidence and prefer their tried-and tested method. Chalk and talk!
Having spent time with schools talking about their VLE’s and time management it occurred to me there was an opportunity to create a School Jotter Essentials product for schools. Strip out all the resources they don’t need initially, produce ready set-up courses with all the labels in place and just train schools on the basics like assignments, forums, questionnaires, quizzes and let them progress from that point.
An open-source LMS can be daunting at first sight to any non-technical person and if we can strip out the non-essential blocks and make it more user-friendly, we may have more people willing to give it a try.
In my mind I almost see a School Jotter cross-over where a dashboard of School Jotter apps are presented to you when you login, labelled Assignments, Forums, Quizzes and you are lead to a slightly easier interface to set these activities up. Matching the simplicity of Jotter with the features of an open-source LMS…who knows. That whole bite-size approach to learning could be replicated here with a simpler interface. Anyway that’s for the future…
So if we build it they will come…how much can we put in place reasonably that will take all the hard, complicated graft out of setting courses up, to just allow educators to add their content in…do we accept it’s an enormous cultural shift in Education at the moment to expect every organisation to be successfully running an e-learning platform or will it come in time and we could just help it a little on it’s way. Providing an entire platform with all content added will never work, educators need ownership of their teaching material, some feel their role is being eroded anyway with the advent of IT and e-learning, so there has to be an optimum level they’d be happy to use. VLE titles from publishers are horrendously expensive, and you are tied into that investment. However bite-size resources would be most welcome if they add the teaching functionality to a course that would be more effective than a PDF worksheet. Any sort of self-marking assessment would be most welcome too as it fulfills that element of teaching.
So having read this back, have I just described a Jotter on steroids…could we develop a Jotter product to rival open-source LMS…the simplicity of Jotter apps with the rigour and flexibility of an LMS. Joodle or Motter…you choose.
Helen Bound
 
Related Webanywhere reading
Find out more about the product in question, you can view our School Jotter here.

This week it is Staff Blog week here at Webanywhere, so each day we will be sharing with you a new blog post from one of our employees. Today it’s Keith Taynton talking about when he taught English as a Foreign Language teacher in Japan and Sweden and witnessed the impact that technology can have on student engagement.

I taught English for several years in Japan where, despite its status as a highly developed technological society, technology use in schools is surprisingly low. Most schools only use computers to teach a computing curriculum. I never saw a school using a virtual learning environment like School Jotter, and in this respect, the UK is much more advanced.
This post is about how I introduced a learning platform into my English class as a Foreign Language teacher in Japan and observed student engagement and learning outcomes skyrocket.
I had a contact in a school in Sweden and we decided to use the learning platform website to connect our junior high school students (aged 12-13) together for them to practice English, a second language for everyone, in a practical, real world way. The platform was styled as a poster upon which multimedia elements could be pasted. For example, students could record a short video introducing themselves, add pictures and text boxes and decorate it with clipart and so forth.
Being able to practice the four skills of language (reading, writing, speaking and listening) in one environment for a real purpose thoroughly engaged all of my students, even the ones who perceived themselves as weak at English. The motivation and novelty of the project helped them to focus on applying their learning and the reward was more than just a score – it showed them that they were not alone in their struggles to learn English and that it was a very useful thing to learn because it opened doors to the outside world that monolinguals do not have.
In short, the website gave both sets of students exciting opportunities to reach out and apply their academic studies in a useful way. Foreign languages are a fairly obvious candidate for technology enhanced learning, but with a little imagination this could be applied to many other disciplines. Imagine studying music and being able to connect with schools in other countries to hear what their music sounds like, the instruments they use and even co-composing music. Geography and history could be brought to life by sharing stories with peers who live in foreign countries, enriching both sides by breaking down stereotypes and boundaries.
All these are possible with the technology available today. You’re limited only by your imagination.
Keith Taynton
 

Related Webanywhere pages

Read some of our case studies to see how we’ve engaged other teachers, students and parents using technology in the classroom.
EdTech15 is an upcoming education technology conference based in Leeds, featuring talks from influential leaders in the education technology field, visit the website to find out more.

In our “What is…?” series we move onto looking at the apps that are available in School Jotter, Webanywhere’s very own school website creator. As the number 1 platform in the UK for school websites, we wanted to help explain why the suite is so popular, starting by asking the question: “What is… The Blog App?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjvVpJ6zBag

If you’d like to know more about The Blog App then why not head on over to the School Jotter page for more information, or even get a free trial today.

We had a fabulous response to this competition, seeing the Tour de Yorkshire really captured your imaginations! A very big thank you to all of the fabulous pupils and schools that sent entries to us. You made the judges job very difficult!
Our winning entry is from a year 3 pupil who attends Skipton Parish Church Of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School. The team is called Speeding Sharks!
 

I think you will all agree this is a perfect representation of the Tour de Yorkshire which gave Yorkshire an exciting and colourful weekend.

We would like to showcase some other fabulous entries that we believe deserve a well done! 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
If you would like to know more about our Bloganywhere app you will find more information here.

Blogging is now regarded by teachers all over the UK as a must-have way to improve literacy skills. It is in the new curriculum and is a great way to motivate your pupils to write for a real audience and get feedback from their teachers, peers and parents if the blog appears on your school website.
With our new blogging app, Bloganywhere, you can improve written English in your class, as well as encourage collaborative working and promote reflection.
On Wednesday, 16th July at 12pm, we are running a free webinar that will explain the benefits of blogging, and then demonstrate how you can harness these benefits with our blogging app, Bloganywhere.
If you would like to join us for this webinar, please email with your name, school name and school postcode to info@webanywhere.co.uk or complete the Get in touch box and we will send you an invitation.
You can find out more about Bloganywhere at www.bloganywhere.co.uk.